Last updated 28/09/2021
Dan Andrews revealed, a bit more than a week ago, Victoria’s Roadmap: Delivering the National Plan and already people have been jumping to some pretty optimistic conclusions about what it all means. The fact of the matter is, that while this announcement contained a lot of good news for businesses like ours who will have been shut down for 108 days out of the last 151... there is no Freedom Day on the horizon - it's going to be a bumpy and confusing ride filled with a lot more press conferences.
What it means for us here at Inner North:
First of all: The dates are fluid and are indicative only, so you are a brave person if you are wanting to re-book your wedding on Nov 5th but these are the dates we are currently working with
Oct 26th - We re-open! We won't be permitted to have patrons inside, but our outdoor beer street will be open to walk-ins only. We will have a capacity of 65.
- No bookings - just rock up.
- SEATED SERVICE ONLY! No D-floor, no yet.
- VACCINATED PATRONS ONLY
- No word yet if unvaccinated children will be allowed to accompany adults
- No word yet on the max group size
Nov 5th - We open even more! But, density quotients still apply! We will be permitted 50 patrons inside
- We will be taking bookings for inside seating. To make a booking, ring us during opening hours.
- SEATED SERVICE ONLY! No D-floor, no yet.
- VACCINATED PATRONS ONLY
- No word yet if unvaccinated children will be allowed to accompany adults
- No word yet on the max booking size.
December ??- We have no idea!
When does December look like?
What happens in December in Victoria is still a mystery. Furthermore, Dan made it clear in yesterday's presser that he wasn't going to be rushing to fill in the blanks (check out 33:30 to 38:00). This is frustrating for us because we have bookings going all the way back to June (lockdown 4) that still haven't been able to happen and they understandably want to know when they can re-schedule for. We simply do not know. We have lots of keen customers wanting to make a new booking for a birthday or engagement in December. Again, we do not know.
Because we don't know, and because there will only be a small number of weeks left in the year, we are not taking any bookings for more than 15 people for the rest of 2021 or until we get more information.
What do we think will happen?
In December we will be approaching a convergence point where lots of different things are all going to start happening at around the same time. Lots of moving parts, which may or may not include:
- Victoria reaching 90% 16+ vaccination rate
- Australia reaching 80% 16+ vaccination rate
- Vaccination opened up to 12-16 year olds
- Intrastate travel will restart - possibly resulting in the linking of regional restrictions to Metro restrictions
- Interstate travel will restart - probably not all states, probably only for vaccinated people
- International travel likely to resume in some capacity.
- Victoria will need to transition from an "economy for the vaccinated" to an "economy for everyone"
All these moving parts means that it is likely that Victoria will want to hitch any future changes to the National Plan which is... well, not yet a plan. NSW, however, has already announced what it will do at it's 90% 16+ vaccination target From Dec 1st, apart from a DQ2 restriction, it is basically a Freedom Day in that almost all business will be back open for everyone no matter their vaccination status. Vertical consumption will resume, the D-floor is back, and quarantine rules for vaccinated international travellers will change. So what's our best guess?
Victoria is approximately 4 weeks behind NSW, so we expect that the rules for Hospitality will remain at Nov. 5th levels for the rest of the year, with changes announced for the new year in the lead up to Christmas. We expect that the rules for private gatherings at home will be loosened up just before Christmas.
In the meantime - let's all race to get vaccinated.